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Northridge 5th Graders Take Action

Check out this awesome story from a local fifth grader named Messina. After hearing about the shortfall with the United Way Backpack Program, their class decided to do something about it. What an inspiration, Northridge! Our future is in good, caring and community-minded hands.

My name is Messina and I’m a fifth grader at Northridge Elementary school. I am very happy to inform you about our great success in raising money for the United way Backpack Program, using problem solving skills, business skills, and communication skills we learned how to become businessmen, and put together two events to raise the maximum amount of donations we could give to the United way Backpack Program. Here are the steps we used to get us as far as we did.

step 1. Our teacher Mrs. Sagsveen got a letter on her computer telling how the backpack program needed help raising 40,000$ or more, she asked us if we wanted to do something about it, and we answered that with deciding do a hat day within our school. We created several different committees to do certain things, like the poster committee would make all the posters, hang them up, and take them done when appropriate. The poster committee made posters for the hat day, the ideas committee ( most of our class) said that the suggested donation should be 1.00$ or more, but if you didn’t have a dollar you could still wear a hat. we got about 700$ from that, but we still had to put some aside for the main event.

step 2. Our class decided that we would have a snack shack that would contain healthy snacks only. Our first obstacle was allergies, some kids in our school had allergies and might not want to buy things at the snack shack, we decided just not to have snacks that some kids might be allergic to. The second obstacle we had to face was germs and refrigeration, we decided to use a friend’s fridge, bowls of ice, and a lunch pack.With the germs, we had bought packaged items instead of open items and homemade items, (except for the fresh fruit). Once again, the poster committee made posters, and the snack shack was under way of being approved. As soon as the snack shack was approved, we got started buying and selling the snacks, this lasted for a week and then ended. We got back our spent profits (160$,130$,140$…), and over 550$ in real profits!

the result. I am very proud to say that we made over 1,300$ for the backpack program. To sum up everything, we started out with a hat day to raise enough money to start a snack shack, and we got even more money from that, so these are the two easy steps that got us 1,300$.